Montebello, Cali govt officials said they discovered yet a.n.o.t.h.e.r secret off-the-books bank account that once contained nearly $1 million in city govt funds and now has only $5,000.

Interim City Manager Peter Cosentini told The LA Times that officials do not know why the secret account was created, why it was never recorded on the city's general ledger or what happened to the govt money that was transferred out. Cosentini said one signator on the secret account was former City Manager Richard Torres. That is not in keeping with city policy, which generally requires the treasurer to be a signator, not the city manager. The bank holding the secret account refused to disclose to the city who the other two signators are.

These revelations about a secret Union Bank account follow news of an off-the-books account at Banco Popular that officials discovered a few weeks ago. That account contained about $240,000 govt monies; officials also discovered records that indicated tens of thousands of govt dollars had been transferred out. They do not know to whom or why.

City govt's official banker is Bank of the West. "We will get to the bottom of this," Cosentini said. He said officials have asked for bank statements and records and are hoping to reconstruct what happened. They have also queried every member of the govt finance department to ask if they know of any other off-the-books accounts.

The Union Bank account came to light when an employee spontaneously alerted the finance director. Officials found out about the Banco Popular account when the bank contacted city govt because the account had been dormant for a while. "It is proven that there is govt money that we cannot account for.

Why were these govt accounts off the books?" City Councilwoman Christina Cortez said, adding that she wants a "forensic audit of everything" in the city.The news about the secret accounts comes as Montebello struggles to close a deficit that could force officials to make deep service cuts and lay off employees.

BTW, criminal probes have begun in San Bernardino agencies for possible govt fraud.

=============================================

Here's how pols loot and pillage the govt in Illinois: Dixon, Ill's dumb accountants, mayor and council failed to miss $53 million govt monies stolen by an insider---the Dixon, Ill govt comptroller.

The dumb*** Mayor never figured there was a secret bank account into which the Comptroller deposited govt funds. Trying to explain how that much money could disappear unnoticed, braindead Mayor James Burke said Dixon has struggled financially because "the state" is far behind on income tax disbursements to munis.....(now there's a red flag is there ever was one).

How Comptroller Rita Crundwell could sustain such an extravagant lifestyle on an $80,000 salary was mostly attributed to her success in the horse industry, the dumbest Mayor in the world stupidly said. "She definitely was a trusted employee, although I've had some suspicion for quite a while just because of her lifestyle," Burke said in an interview.

A Chicago-based corruption watchdog, the Better Govt Association, called Dixon a wakeup call for state and local officials to put in place better safeguards, especially in smaller towns that lack rigorous oversight.

"Tens of billions of our tax dollars flow through 7,000 plus units of government in Illinois every year. And we can only watch a few of them," said the association's president, Andy Shaw. "Most of them don't have inspector generals. Most of them don't have auditor generals. Most of them don't have watchdog groups looking closely.... It's ripe for rip-offs."

===============================================

Here's an astoundingly brazen larceny -- $5.7 million was electronically emptied out of the coffers of Columbia University into an employee's bank account. Now, several university employees are on trial----accused of funneling the stolen millions into the Bank account of alleged mastermind George Castro, 49, in collusion w/ two workers in the university's accounts payable dept..... allegedly altering a routing code and other info connected to payments slated to go from the university's medical center to an affiliate hospital.

The money never reached its destination. "Within six weeks, over $5 million meant for New York Presbyterian Hospital found it's way into the employee's Bank account," prosecutors said.

when nabbed, one university employee was carrying bags of money -- $200,000 in cash -- into his new $80,000 Audi as cops busted him outside his Bronx residence..... he and his co-defendants had at that point thrown hundreds of thousands of stolen dollars into failed day trading investments. One accounting dept insider pled guilty to grand larceny and is hoping to avoid jail by testifying against the four defendants and his accounts payable co-conspirator.

To cover their tracks, govt insiders might create fake invoices to show that money deposited into secret accounts was being used for legitimate purposes. Crooked inside auditors might fraudulently issue statements of payments from other sources that actually covered the transfer of govt funds into secret bank accounts.

L/E should scrutinize bank accounts for suspicious activites: (A) large deposits, (B) funds transferred from one account into another, (C) request for withdrawals. Bank records might also show diversions to secret LLC and other accounts, to finance personal expenses, political campaigns, and the like.

Govt fraud can also be facilitated by withdrawals, gift cards purchases, credit card purchases and intrabank transfers from govt/personal/authority accounts into personal accounts.

LA School Insurance Shocker: Taxpayers Paid $416 Million, Educators Paid Zero. They also need to check where the school district buys insurance. One of the big scams in Wisconsin that lead to the upheaval there was that school districts were forced to buy insurance from the teachers' union-owned insurance company----the costs were many times what the same coverage would cost on the open market. Gov Scott Walker changed all that.

==================================================

Under the Bank Secrecy Act, banks are required to establish, implement and maintain programs designed to detect and report suspicious activity indicative of money laundering and other financial crimes.

The Bank Secrecy Act was enacted to protect the public from harm by identifying and detecting money laundering from criminal enterprises, terrorism, tax evasion or other unlawful activities, the special agent in charge for Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation, explained.

L/E needs to examine the bank accounts used to pay for govt activities. Taxpayers should demand the Bank Secrecy Act be used to prosecute govt fraud pronto.

So not only do Public Employees virtually steal from us with their outrageous salaries, benefits and pensions, but they also rob us of money that we entrust to them. At the end of the day, you just have to wonder if there are any honest people left in government service!

Of course the poster child for that is the city of Bell, California. The city manager paid over a million dollars a year, and the various city council members were also paid hundreds of thousands. The city had the police writing tickets to various non-politically connected businesses, charging commercial trucks that merely drove through town. (Interstate 710 crosses the the town and one of its exits to LA dumps people onto Florence, which crosses Bell to get to LA.)

14
posted on 09/01/2012 9:37:18 PM PDT
by donmeaker
(Blunderbuss: A short weapon, ... now superceded in civilized countries by more advanced weaponry.)

The Obamanations (insiders and politicians) sucked up trillions under the guise of inheriting the "Bush financial crisis." 90% of so-called "green energy" zillions went to Obama' pals.

THIS MADE ME LAUGH OUT LOUD Obama COS Rahm Emanuel "suddenly" discovered he wanted to be Chicago's mayor---the little turd went before the mics and announced his campaign "raised $10 million in just a few weeks." Rahm also controlled the US Treasury as COS.

================================================ Obama presided over the biggest political heist in US history. What the so-called "collapse" of the banking system wrought:

FOURTEEN TRILLION DOLLARS Behind The Real Size of the Bailout; A guide to the abbreviations, acronyms, and obscure programs that make up the $14 trillion federal bailout of Wall StreetSOURCE motherjones.com Mon Dec. 21, 2009 12:23 PM PST

The price tag for the Wall Street bailout is often put at $700 billionthe size of the Troubled Assets Relief Program. But TARP is just the best known program in an array of more than 30 overseen by Treasury Department and Federal Reserve that have paid out or put aside money to bail out financial firms and inject money into the markets.

To get a sense of the size of the real $14 trillion bailout, see our chart at web site. Below, a guide to the pieces of the puzzle:

Money Market Mutual Fund: In September 2008, the Treasury announced that it would insure the holdings of publicly offered money market mutual funds. According to the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (SIGTARP), these guarantees could have potentially cost the federal government more than $3 trillion [PDF].

Public-Private Investment Fund: This joint Treasury-Federal Reserve program bought toxic assets from banks and brokeragesas much as $5 billion of assets per firm. According to SIGTARP, the government's potential exposure from the PPIF is between $500 million and $1 trillion [PDF].

TARP: As part of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the Treasury has made loans to or investments more than 750 banks and financial institutions. $650 billion has been paid out (not including HAMP; see below). As of December 21, 2009, $117.5 billion of that has been repaid.

Government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) stock purchase: The Treasury has bought $200 million in preferred stock from Fannie Mae and another $200 million from Freddie Mac [PDF] to show that they "will remain viable entities critical to the functioning of the housing and mortgage markets."

GSE mortgage-backed securities purchase: Under the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008, the Treasury may buy mortgage-backed securities from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. According to SIGTARP, these purchases could cost as much as $314 billion ---SNIP---.

LONG READ---go to web site to read more and checkout the shocking financial charts.

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